‘Quite honestly I don’t care. Let’s face it; we’ll never get rid of the same faces; their children or even their grandchildren,” said a Beirut financier, commenting on last week’s news that the presidential vacuum might be over. “So all I want is a modicum of stability and security so we can do business.”
The apparent break in the 18-month deadlock certainly came from left field after Saad Hariri, the exiled head of the Future movement and former prime minister, reached out, as the Americans would say, to Suleiman Franjieh, grandson of Lebanon’s 10th president, and leader of the pro Syrian Marada Party. The deal they cooked would result in Mr Hariri, a Sunni, becoming the next prime minister, with Mr Franjieh, a Maronite, as Lebanon’s 17th president. The arrangement seemingly has the backing of Saudi Arabia, Iran, the US and France, all of whom are apparently keen that Lebanon doesn’t implode. That it has taken this long for them to smell the coffee is a bit worrying but, hey ho, better late than never.
Peaks and troughs define Lebanon’s economic cycles. The last crisis, in 2008, which involved an 18-month occupation of central Beirut, which culminated in a botched coup attempt by Hizbollah in May of that year, ended with Qatari- sponsored conference in Doha the same month. Lebanon’s squabbling parties kissed and made-up, “elected” a new president, and in doing so ensured three years of serious prosperity, with growth running at about 8 per cent.
It will take a more than a round of effusive hugging to get things going again. Two factors exist that didn’t seven-and-half years ago.
First Syria, whose civil conflict has triggered an influx of at least 1.5 million refugees pushing our infrastructure to breaking point. It has threatened security and seriously nobbled the economy both in terms of direct trade, transshipment operations and rising unemployment in the face of cheap Syrian labour. Secondly, public confidence in the offices of the state is at rock bottom. An inability to deliver any transparency on the offshore natural oil and gas exploration, a project that could transform the country’s fortunes and turn Lebanon into a regional Norway, and an inability to find a solution to the rubbish crisis that began in July and is still unresolved, has opened the public’s eyes to just how incompetent and kleptomaniacal Lebanon’s political class can be.
That Mr Hariri may be returning to serve a second term will also be greeted with caution. Despite being the son of the late Rafik Hariri, a billionaire who dragged Lebanon kicking and screaming out of the civil war doldrums, Hariri junior has never really demonstrated his father’s leadership qualities nor his economic vision. Rather he has spent the past four-and-a-half years living in between Riyadh and Paris and has a reputation as something of a playboy and a Saudi yes-man.
He does, nonetheless, have a loyal following, especially in Beirut and in his father’s hometown of Sidon, and, despite the inevitable, not to mention distasteful horse trading over the allocation of cabinet seats, he must, should he get the nod, pick a cabinet that can get the country moving again.
The first job for the new government is to win back public support. The rubbish crisis needs to be solved immediately and a concerted national programme of recycling (Mr Frangieh is apparently something of an environmentalist) would send the right signal to a Lebanese population waiting to catch cholera.
Lebanese tourism also needs serious resuscitation, and while we’re on the subject it might be a good idea to woo businesses, shops and restaurants back to the Beirut Central District, the centrepiece of Hariri senior’s economic vision, but which is currently a ghost town. Security guarantees are all well and good but not when it kills off commerce, right?
And finally, if it really feels like rolling up its sleeves, it might also want to examine ways to reduce the budget deficit, which rose by nearly 20 per cent in the first nine months of 2015 with total government revenues – income tax, VAT, telecoms, state salaries and the like – totalling $6.8 billion, a fall of 2.6 per cent on the previous period for 2014.
But ultimately we Lebanese are a forgiving bunch. We don’t ask for a lot. Like the financier said, give us stability and security and we’ll do the rest.
Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton
